Year in Review: Featuring the most popular newsletters from the past year
Year in Review: Featuring the most popular newsletters from the past year
Issue 63: Our most popular newsletters from 2022, plus a couple of hidden gems
Thanks for a wonderful year!
Our newsletter experienced a ton of growth in 2022—with nearly 2000 subscribers—and because there are so many new people, we decided to highlight our most popular posts, plus a couple of hidden gems from when we were a smaller community. Whether you’re an old subscriber who missed one of these or a new subscriber who needs a place to start reading, these previous newsletters will hopefully offer useful insights and spark curiosity.
Here are our biggest hits of 2022:
Number 5 - Why do people cling to false beliefs? (with video)
This was the first episode of a four-part mini series on our Youtube channel that explores key ideas from The Power of Us book. Using the example of a cult called the Seekers that was active in Chicago in 1954, we explained how factors such as initial commitment to an idea and social support can lead people to hold on to false beliefs. We also describe how this phenomenon can be observed in online communities with strong belief systems that are reinforced by moral-emotional language.
Number 4 - A Few of Our Favorite Things from 2022
Take a peek into our minds as we reflect on our favorite shows, essays, podcasts, and music from 2022. We’re guessing that because this was popular, people either love or hate our tastes in art and media.
Number 3 - How to keep your New Year’s resolutions
Our “TIMEly” piece from last week touches on why about 80% of New Year’s resolutions tend to fail, and how individuals can leverage social groups to achieve their goals!
We also asked readers to send in their own New Year’s resolutions. Shoutout to Ecem B who is starting a master’s degree in sociology this year—best of luck with all of your academic goals!
Number 2 - The Business of WE interview with Laura Kriska
We interviewed Laura Kriska, author of The Business of WE, to discuss how her book provides leaders with tools to foster connections between people of diverse backgrounds, helping organizations become more inclusive and productive. The book addresses the "us versus them" dynamics that people experience every day, and teaches readers how to narrow gaps that cause misunderstandings and negative outcomes by accessing invisible data about other cultural groups or persons.
Number 1 - How politicians leverage polarizing language — and how we can fix it
Our top newsletter of this year gave additional context to a New York Times front-page article analyzing polarizing language used by congressional leaders, using a new Online Polarization Dictionary created by Jay and his colleagues. They found that every time people used a moral-emotional word in a Twitter message about political issues it was 20% more likely to be shared by others—and this type of language was linked to online polarization.
+2 Hidden Gems
Dom’s favorite: The "groupthink" myth and the real reasons many teams make bad decisions
The concept of groupthink has a powerful origin story. Unfortunately, it is incomplete and in need of significant revision. It turns out that things didn’t happen quite as we’ve always been told! In this post from our newsletter’s early days, we explored better ways to think about groupthink and how teams, organizations, and groups can avoid it. We also wrote a companion piece about groupthink that appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
Jay’s favorite: Lessons in Leadership from Ukraine
This year, Putin pushed the world to the precipice of a nuclear war and initiated one of the most violent conflicts in Europe since WWII. To almost everyone’s surprise, Ukrainians not only defended their country from the must larger Russian military, but pushed them back against all odds. Very early in the conflict, we noticed that President Zelensky was embodying the form of identity leadership that we had written about in our book. When we wrote the column, we discussed the possibility that he was in mortal danger and might be killed within days or even hours. But his inspiring example helped turn the tide and serves as a case study of compelling leadership.
It's a great newsletter, and super for someone like me (a neuroscientist who sometimes feels he should have done social psych!) who wants to keep an eye on what's going on. Congrats.